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The Samsung Galaxy Note 9, announced August 9, takes the title away from last year’s Galaxy Note 8 as the company’s flagship big-screen smartphone. It’s “the world’s most advanced smartphone,” according to a Samsung exec at today’s unveiling; it’s bigger, more powerful, and comes with way more storage than the Note 8. True, at its heart the Note 9 is mostly spec’d up Note 8 — very similar looking — which is what you’d expect from any next-gen smartphone, but it also comes with some brand new features that loyalists to the Note line with be all-in for.
Samsung’s Note line is designed for power users. It’s always been the company’s biggest and most powerful smartphone, plus it comes with the S Pen (a stylus) so you can take notes or draw directly on the screen. That said, being a powerful and big-screen smartphone isn’t a key differentiator like it used to eight years ago when Samsung announced its first Note. So in order to differentiate the Note 9, Samsung did a couple things.
First, it went big on storage. Real big. The Note 9 starts at 128GB and can get up to 512GB if you want to go big. Not to stop there, the Note 9 comes with a microSD slot for expandable storage. You can add a 512GB microSD card and, if you already have a 512GB version, that gives you a total 1TB phone. That’s more than most laptops, which is just insane (and probably overkill).
Then there’s battery life. The Note 9 has a massive 4,000mAh battery that promises enough juice so that the phone lasts all day, even if you’re on it all day. For reference, the 4,000mAh is a pretty sizable upgrade over the Note 8’s 3,300mAh battery. Although impressive, it also leaves a slight hint of worry — it’s almost like we’ve has forgotten about the trouble Samsung’s Note line has had with batteries in the past.
The new S Pen on the Note 9 is largely the same shape and size of previous versions, but there are two key differences. It’s yellow, first of all, but more importantly, it comes with built-in Bluetooth, which also means it needs to be charged. However, this new S Pen doesn’t rely on its battery to draw, take notes or do other things on-screen — in this way it works exactly the same as previous S Pens. Instead, the Bluetooth functionality, teamed up with a little button on the S Pen, enables you to use it as a remote. You can toggle through slides of a presentation or even use it as a remote control for your phone’s cameras (yes, you can take better selfies). Samsung says that the S Pen has a battery of around 30 minutes, but once you put it back it the Note 9 it charges back up in a few minutes.
Like with Samsung’s recently released 2-in-1 tablet, the Galaxy Tab S4, the Note 9 also comes integrated with Samsung DeX, allowing you to connect your smartphone to an external monitor for a dual screen mode, in order to show separate windows on the smartphone and monitor (it’s not just mirroring screens). You just need an HDMI adapter, which is sold separately, but the benefit with this, other than the bigger screen, is you’re essentially able to use the Note 9 more like a computer. Using Samsung DeX with a Note smartphone isn’t novel, but with the Note 8 you needed a separated docking station — now it’s all built directly into the smartphone.
